TMNT: Used
by princessebee
Summary: 2k14verse. Raphril. The morning after the events in 'Wanting'. Two perspectives.


When Raphael first stirred into wakefulness, he knew something was different.

The shape of the bed, rectangular and flat, instead of the convex square he was accustomed to. The scent of the air – the weight of it – this room was much smaller, and above ground.

The warm, soft bundle he held in his arms, sweet and fragrant and causing a reflexive tug in his tail.

Blinking against the sleep that bleared his gaze, Raphael slowly shifted his head downwards, not quite daring to believe it was true until he saw it with his own eyes.

There, curled up against his plastron and wrapped in his embrace, was April. Soundly asleep with her pink lips slack, drooling somehow adorably onto the pillow, her breathing deep and regular, her hair in captivating tangles around her face.

And the events of the previous night flooded into his memory, triggering a hot rush of blood straight into his groin even as he caught his breath in disbelief.

April undressing before him. April on the couch as he went down on her. April grinding and moaning his name. The scent of her. The taste of her. The feel of her coming against his face.

A symphony of experiences he had never, not in his wildest dreams, imagined he would ever have. All in one night.

He had been with a woman, he realised, gazing upon April's sleeping face and burning to push her hair back off of it, to relish the feel of those soft strands, to stroke her lovely cheeks; not quite daring in case she woke. Though they had not engaged in that act of final consummation – they had still been deeply, intensely intimate. He had been with a woman.

And then they had gone to bed. And somehow, he had slept, heavily and dreamlessly, on a flat surface, on his side, with a warm, naked woman held against him – and he hadn't hurt her. Somehow, he had held this fragile, delicate form within arms that could crush stone to powder for uncounted hours, and though he had never done it before she was untouched and undisturbed. And she had trusted him to do it. Without question.

It was almost too much to comprehend.

Raphael did not dare move; though he longed to stroke his hands down April's flanks, remind himself that her silky skin really did feel _that_ good, though he would've been more comfortable if he could just roll forward a little so there was less pressure on his shell, though he knew he should check the time and figure out exactly how much shit he would be in once he returned to the lair, he did none of these things. He scarcely dared breathe, gazing down into April's beautiful face, keeping still as a stone even as he yearned to draw her even closer, to slip a thigh in-between hers, nuzzle her hair and press tender kisses to her eyelids. To do any of it would be to risk waking her.

And if she woke, the spell might be broken.

She might regret what they had done. Look upon him as the monster he really was, unchanged no matter how many times they had kissed. Push him from her. Hate him.

So he remained still and silent, holding her carefully against him, her head pillowed on one big bicep, his other arm slung over her waist, and simply gazed upon her.

_Jesus Christ, I could get used to this._

It was a terrible thought. To become accustomed to the intoxicating delight of being entwined with her soft feminine body each night, waking each morning with his senses suffused with her, stirring his desire even as she soothed his heart. To expect the treat of gazing into her eyes as she woke, of seeing the first drowsy thoughts that fluttered in her brilliant mind, of witnessing her first smile of the day. How vulnerable it would leave him, to take such a thing for granted, to simply trust such a privilege would always be his.

How absolutely it would decimate him were it ever to be taken away.

As he stared down at her, his eyes caressing her cheeks and the slope of her nose, the pouty cushion of her lower lip and the thick dark lashes of her eyes, he realised he was already in too deep.

Then, as though his gaze were a tangible weight, April began to stir. A little crease between her brows a soft noise; her head shifting so that her silky hair slithered sweetly against his arm where she rested.

Raphael realised she was waking up. That the moment was inevitable, despite his best efforts to delay it. Any second now, her eyes would open and she would look at him, her first sight upon wakening.

And he knew he did not want to see what would be there, raw and honest, unable to be concealed with her defences still down from slumber, when she did.

Quickly, stealthily, he disentangled himself as she twitched and stirred again, rolling carefully over to put his carapace to her. The loss of her left him abruptly cold, his arms aching to envelop her once more, his plastron still feeling the ghost of where her breasts had pressed against him, his need for her like an overwhelming tide that threatened to erupt from him before he could stem it. He shut his eyes against it and grit his teeth. He would not allow himself to get used to this.

April had been vaguely aware for some time that she was being steadily tugged into consciousness, but she was so warm and comfortable, felt so secure and at peace, that she clung determinedly to sleep.

Abruptly then, everything shifted and changed and she felt suddenly cold and exposed, the solid warmth that had enveloped her retreating as quickly as the sun behind a cloud.

And the next moment, her eyes were blinking open and she was gazing blearily about her, trying to figure out what had changed.

Something was certainly different.

Beside her, the bed dipped alarmingly and something dark and heavily grooved domed beneath the covers. April's eyes fluttered as she struggled to clear the sleep from them, trying to make sense of the strange apparition.

A moment later, she smiled as recollection welled her drowsy mind and everything slipped easily into place: Raphael. Raphael lay in bed beside her. Raphael and she had made love the night before, in her living room. And it had been – well, it had been pretty fucking mind-blowing actually. April shifted a little as she came more fully within her body and felt the slipperiness between her legs, remnant from the powerful orgasm he had elicited from her with very little guidance. God, it had been incredibly erotic, his enthusiasm and overwhelming strength, the care he had taken even amidst the passion he had been swept away on. She knew he'd pulled himself off whilst he had been going down on her and the thought of it caused an involuntary clench between her thighs. Before he had clambered into bed beside her, he had taken off the belt from which the thongs and panels of leather were hung, but kept on the red briefs beneath, signalling clearly he was cautious yet of moving forward. She didn't want to pressure him or rush him into anything he wasn't ready for, but God she was so, _so _ready to have him inside her and she felt herself growing wetter at the mere thought of it, unable to help her thoughts racing ahead to that time he would trust her enough to share himself fully with her.

In the meantime, April found herself contemplating another aspect of his impressive being she had not had much experience with: his carapace. The complex arrangement of tough, intricately grooved scutes was dark brown in colour and bore the unmistakeable scars of many a battle, several finely healed over cracks further decorating its surface, intersecting the bold red characters of the _kanji_ painted on it. The worst of these cracks – the one the Shredder had stomped into his shell during that frighteningly brutal, devastatingly brief brawl – had healed well, she noted, though its mark would always be there. Piqued and intrigued, April found herself reaching out and ghosting her fingertips along the bony, ridged surface of the scutes, remembering how they had felt beneath her feet as her toes curled against them the night before, and she blushed and felt her smile grow bigger.

_I could get used to this_, she thought, marvelling at how oddly comfortable she felt waking up next to a mutant turtle. She only wished she were ensconced within his arms as well.

She knew the turtles' shells were sensitive to touch; Michelangelo had made that abundantly clear and she had witnessed for herself how Raphael had shuddered and trembled when she had caressed his plastron and the sensitive places his shell connected with his body. Scooting closer to his sleeping form, she slipped her hand beneath the covers and began to rub his lower shell in soft, tender circles, letting her nails gently scrape the surface. It was a daring thing to do, she knew: Raphael was protective of his personal space, still uneasy about her acceptance of him and unwilling to appear too vulnerable. He might find waking to such an intimately pleasurable sensation confronting – even violating. Yet she so badly wanted him to know she accepted him as he was, what he was. And despite his hefty bulk, his toughness and self-possession, there was something starved about him – as though he were concealing a craving for comfort and companionship beneath the aggressive and standoffish exterior. She would have to talk to Splinter to be sure, but she deeply suspected Raphael had been the first of his brothers to start spurning parental affection, desperate to assert his independence no matter the cost to his secret heart.

And a little frown puckered her brows as she reflected on the warm pressure that had seemed to embrace her as she was waking – that had vanished moments later so abruptly, leaving her chilled and lonely.

April increased the pressure of her caress, her eyes coasting upwards over the outline of his marginal plates, the defined peaks of his biceps and deltoids beyond it, up to where the top of his domed skull peeked up above the nuchal plate, half his face still swathed in the red mask she suspected he regarded akin to armour. Daring a little more, she leant forward and played her lips softly, tenderly, against one of his central scutes, enjoying the novel rough sensation of it against her flesh, wondering just how sensitive his carapace was, continuing to stroke him below, revelling in a heady sense of intimacy she had not known for far too long a time.

A moment later a deep shudder ran through him and then he was shifting, the bed rocking with his weight, the covers rising as he rolled towards her like an avalanche and she tilted her head back to greet him with a soft smile on her lips.

"Hey," she said gently as he rolled into view, settling his massive bulk next to her but at a safe distance, his expression cautious and guarded – but even still not completely concealing the need that glimmered deep in his eye, a look so vulnerable her heart clenched to see it.

"Hey," he murmured back, his deep baritone seeming to rumble across her skin, leaving gooseflesh in its wake.

There was any number of things she could have said then. But as she looked up into his rugged, masculine face – inhuman but so captivatingly expressive – and detected the pensiveness that lurked there, the vague air of dread anticipation, she knew no words would serve them at that moment.

So instead she wiggled closer to him, nudging his arm up and over her, sliding in close so that she could press her breasts and groin against his plastron and sling her thigh over his. Then she reached up and pressed her mouth to his lips and was rewarded a second later when he kissed her back, his arms suddenly alive and tight about her, pulling her even closer against him, his mouth pushing hers open to deepen the kiss so that her head swam with the delirium of it and her body was awash and tingling.

She melted deeper into his arms, feeling as though she were being most deliciously smothered in all that hard, hot muscle, trembling delightedly as one of his huge hands dared to cup her ass and give it a little squeeze, the other gently pushing strands of hair back off her face as still their lips lingered.

Lulled by his warm embrace and soothed by his kiss, April reached her arms up to slip around his neck, loving the feel of his scales sliding against her flesh, how her breasts pressed and flattened against the firmness of his plastron, how his massive arms wrapped around her made her feel so safe and treasured that she felt with frightening intensity that she never wanted to be anywhere else again and her heart trembled with the enormity of it.

Slowly, gently, their kisses ebbed to a lingering end and she felt Raphael's mouth curve against hers finally in a little smile that buoyed her heart. Their foreheads pressed for a long, sweet moment and then she opened her eyes, not bothering to conceal from him the full magnitude of what she was feeling.

His own eyes cracked open and met her gaze and she heard him inhale sharply at what he beheld there, awaiting him so boldly.

And then his face cracked with emotion so raw and exposed it took her breath away. In the next instant he had buried his face in her hair, clutching her tight against him, his shoulders heaving with feeling and she turned her face into his neck and breathed in deep the musky scent of him, letting him hide because she had already seen everything she needed to, and it left her reeling.

And she knew that, although she wanted to wake up just like that every morning, held close in his embrace and secret witness to those tender, breathtaking glimpses directly into his soul, although she already sensed that she was hooked, that every day she would wake without him there would feel cold and hollow from then on, she also knew that the powerful surge of emotion that bound them to each other was something she could never get used to.

**ooo**

_I hope you like this one, guys. I wrote it in a state of total exhaustion and not 100% sure about it because of the perspective change but I figure I can give insight into what Raphael was thinking/feeling in the next fic. Other than that I strove to indicate it in other ways. Hopefully it works. The structural differences in each perspective bug me too, but hopefully it still works as one cohesive piece and they complement each other. D: I dunno, my brain is fried!_

_Also I thought it worthwhile pointing out in their reflections of what they've done together that penetrative sex is not the only kind of sex. Over-emphasis on penetrative sex excludes queer people and people who don't wish to use their bodies in certain ways for any number of reasons and is an over-simplistic concept of sex. IMO, April and Raphael have definitely already had sex in Wanting. There are other types of sex they can have, of course, including penetrative, but I think what they did certainly fits the definition and they reflect on it accordingly._

_Of course, I am still keenly anticipating that "final consummation". :P_


End file.
